MAXON Congratulates 3D Design Category Winner in Cut&Paste 2009 Digital Design Tournament’s First-ever Global Championship
November 24, 2009

MAXON Congratulates 3D Design Category Winner in Cut&Paste 2009 Digital Design Tournament’s First-ever Global Championship

Newbury Park, Calif. - Maxon, a developer of professional 3D modeling, painting, animation, and rendering solutions, congratulates Gabriel Smetzer on winning the 2009 Cut&Paste Digital Design Tournament’s first-ever Global Championship in the 3D Competition category. Smetzer, a San Francisco-based freelance motion graphics designer tapped into MAXON’s CINEMA 4D content creation tool set, taking advantage of its interface and workflow to achieve the winning 3D design and beating out 15 other international semifinalists in this category.
Smetzer’s winning design can be viewed at: http://gc2009.cutandpaste.com/3d-design.htm



The Cut&Paste Digital Design Tournament, now in its fourth year, is a live design competition that provides visibility and inspiration to established and aspiring designers while showcasing the creative process. From February to June 2009, Cut&Paste organizers conducted qualifying events in 16 cities worldwide – Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland, Boston, New York, Toronto, Chicago, Amsterdam, London, Berlin, Barcelona, Milan, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Tokyo, and Sydney – resulting in 256 international competitors and 48 city semifinalists in the 2D, 3D, and Motion Design categories.

At the Global Championship grand finale, which took place in New York City on Friday, October 16, 2009, Smetzer competed onstage with 15 other semifinalists in a fast-paced environment and a tech setup that projected the creation process in real-time on large-scale displays in full view of an audience and a panel of judges. Each competitor was able to select the 3D program of their choice and asked to create an original design within a 20-minute period related to the themes of “Duality” and “My Instrument."

Smetzer, who has used CINEMA 4D the past five years on a wide variety of artistic and corporate projects for clients such as NASA, Cisco, Nokia, etc., deployed the software at Cut&Paste 2009 and commented that having the right software tools was key to successfully bringing his concept to life from start-to-finish in the extremely limited timeframe.

For the “Duality” theme at the Global Championship event, Smetzer created a crow which he explains is a living symbol of the after-life in many cultures. The design included giving life to colorful flying cubes emanating from the bird’s open beak. For his “My Instrument” design, Smetzer created a phonograph with flowers growing out of the horn which he stated was a crowd pleaser and an idea everyone could relate to.

Smetzer adds, “Some of the 3D competitors really struggled with their renders. My final renders were full screen, included ambient occlusion and quality anti-aliasing and were finished in less than a minute on a duo core machine. I love using CINEMA 4D because it makes production fast and easy and there is no limit to what story I can tell.” “The Cut&Paste Digital Design Tournament is one of the most prominent international showcases for artists on top of their game to create and share great design work under the most extreme circumstances,” says Paul Babb, president, MAXON US. “We congratulate Gabriel Smetzer for pushing artistic boundaries with his talent, stamina and focus and are pleased that our robust software tools played a central role in helping him take top honors in the 3D Design category.”

Smetzer first became acquainted with CINEMA 4D at a Berkeley, Calif. community college multimedia art program. As a self-described 3D generalist, he has tried other 3D software programs but has found CINEMA 4D especially lends itself to small studio environments as it is easy to learn and “makes sense” coming from an artist versus technical background. Smetzer continues to sharpen his 3D skills and knowledge of CINEMA 4D at Cineversity, MAXON’s 24/7 education and training resource site.